So basically there could be certain disputed zones/areas that periodically (semi-randomly?) switch between various NPC factions the same way RV used to switch back-n-forth in CoH depending on whether the heroes or villains were winning the PvP battles.

You could then have generic missions or features of those zones that are only accessible to players when one faction or another has a certain percentage of control over the area. Unlike a PvP zone players shouldn't directly be able to affect which way the areas switch - it'd totally be up to the ebb and flow of the NPCs fighting each other. To be fair none of these random missions/features should ever be absolutely critical to complete general quests or levels - I'd hate to see the game continuously prevent me from getting to something important based on the whim of the RNG favoring one faction over the other at any given time.

This could be an interesting way to have various "living zones" that change from time to time. I don't think the entire game should work like this; there should always be static places where if you want to fight faction X, Y or Z you'll always be able to find them there. But in limited places having things randomly change would be cool.

Gangrel wrote:

Lothic wrote:
This could be an interesting way to have various "living zones" that change from time to time. I don't think the entire game should work like this; there should always be static places where if you want to fight faction X, Y or Z you'll always be able to find them there. But in limited places having things randomly change would be cool.

This is *exactly* the type of thing that Redlynne was talking about when she was bringing up the Control Points idea from Tabula Rasa.

Redlynne wrote:

CONTROL POINTS ... linky.
And a +1 to Gangrel for pointing that out so I didn't have to. ^_-

I vaguely remembered that thread and wasn't really trying to take credit for the idea in general.

For what it's worth my unique take on it here was that the zone/area changes would NOT be under direct player control. At the very least there could easily be some areas that might be "player flipable" and others that wouldn't. After all why couldn't there be areas in the game that changed randomly regardless of what players do?

I have nothing against the disputed open zone idea (and think that could be rather interesting), but the way I read the OP I thought it was meant as a clever way of reusing instanced TF maps. Kind of like what they did with the iTrial locations like the BAF, Lambda, etc: you saw them during regular content and heard them talked about, so that when you did the iTrial you already had a bit of background to tie it into the overall lore, while keeping it entirely optional. Except of course the iTrial maps were one-use only, so this would expand upon the concept.

Redlynne wrote:

Lothic, the easiest way to do that is to set up the objectives such that they can be "flipped" by NPCs, not just by PCs. I say that because ideally you'd want these things to "flip" because something HAPPENED, as opposed to because a pair of dice were rolled in the sky and suddenly everything changed for what looks like (on the ground) no discernable reason. You also want to have "flip" events be something that PCs can intervene in, rather than something that just occurs by fiat (and there's nothing you can do about it).
You follow me?

No, I don't really.

I see no reason why there couldn't be things in the game like "turf wars" between factions that could be going on "in the background" so to speak without any player intervention. Your implication that it would be "ideal" for anything like this to always be under direct player control (instead of a well designed application of a RNG) doesn't really make much sense to me. Sometimes things just do happen "by fiat" as you put it.

To be clear I'm not completely against your idea of having SOME of these things being manipulated by players via objectives. I just don't see why ALL of them would have to be. Sometimes group-based societal events/interactions just happen in the world that no one individual has control of.

Also for what it's worth I don't see these kinds of changes being strictly black-n-white binary where suddenly an entire region switches between faction A or B in an instant. Like RV worked I see these things working on a spectrum where at any given time an area might be say 40%/60% or 10%/90% in favor of one faction or another and the actual "flips" might only happen once every few hours of realtime. In this way the changes could be seen as semi-gradual from a player's POV.

Think of how this could have applied to a CoH zone like RWZ: Instead of a static, lifeless zone it might have been pretty cool to log in one day and have the Rikti in control of 90% of the zone then the next day they only control say 10%. As far a players are concerned it would have "switched things up" for everyone each play session and made us have to adapt to the psudeo-dynamic situation of the world we were in that would have been "beyond" our control.

Gangrel wrote:

Lothic wrote:
Think of how this could have applied to a CoH zone like RWZ: Instead of a static, lifeless zone it might have been pretty cool to log in one day and have the Rikti in control of 90% of the zone then the next day they only control say 10%. As far a players are concerned it would have "switched things up" for everyone each play session and made us have to adapt to the psudeo-dynamic situation of the world we were in that would have been "beyond" our control.

I think that if the players are able to influence it to a greater or lesser degree it would feel more alive. That is not to say that it WOULDN'T happen without player influence, but if you were able to stop a flip from happening because it was beneficial for you, then so much the better.

Again the general premise that having these things under player control will ALWAYS make them better is suspect at best. Again sometimes real life happens regardless of what any of the participants try to do about it or not. Turf wars that ebb-n-flow across areas of the city REGARDLESS of whether players are involved or not seems "alive" enough to me.

All I'm saying is that in SOME cases these flips could happen without players being able to affect it indirectly or otherwise. It's going to be a big game eventually - there's absolutely no reason why every potential flipable area should be under some kind of constant pseudo-pvplike control of players. Why can't there be some switchable areas that players can influence and other areas they can't?

Redlynne wrote:

Lothic, I think you're over-reading what I said. I used the word "intervene" and I meant it in the sense of "participate" ... I did not use the word "control" and I certainly did not have the intent that you have attributed to my statement(s).
For what it's worth, I agree with you that setting things up such that PCs "control" (with certainty) what's happening would be a mistake. By the same token, I also believe that making PCs "powerless" to manipulate these events of flipping dominance of regions a similarly fatal mistake.
Ideally, I'd want PCs to be able to "participate" in a way that allows them to INFLUENCE the outcome of events (in a stack the deck sort of way) rather than allow them to CONTROL the outcome of events. In other words, what PCs "do" will make a difference, but you're still acting in support of NPCs rather than taking control of things yourself and the NPCs are merely distractions (or cannon fodder) to be fed to the meat grinder (for giggles and profit).
This harkens back to something I've mentioned repeatedly in these forums ... PvEvP ... Player vs Environment vs Player. In such a setup, the confrontations are Indirect and are carried out through the medium of the game's environment (and NPCs), rather than having the Players duke it out with each other directly. That way the competition becomes more of a "sport" than it does a "war" (or worse, a ROFLstomp gankfest).
Tricky to "tune" and would definitely need multiple iterations of testing and retuning, but that's the goal I'd want to be going for.

Once again I realize what you meant in terms of the difference between "controlling" the events versus "influencing" the events. I realize you don't really want players to be physically moving/driving individual NPCs around as if it was some kind of direct mini-game or pseudo-PVP situation.

But one more time I'll take issue with your idea that players MUST have some form of direct involvement with any and all of these area switch situations. I would not consider it "ideal" if there were say 23 different "area switch" instances like this in the game that players would be able to influence/manipulate all 23 of them at any given time. It would not be a "fatal mistake" if some of these turf wars scenarios (like my previous CoH RWZ example) simply happened back-n-forth randomly without the ability of any player to influence in the least. How can you possibly assume that every event in the city could be overtly tinkered with in the first place?

Let me try to give you the bigger picture of what would be going on here. Let's take an example of one of these situations that could in fact be manipulated just like you're implying. Let's say at any given time there's 10 players who are actively "pushing the buttons" so to speak to try to manipulate the situation so that one outcome/faction or the other becomes dominate. For the hundreds of other players flying around in the area (who aren't actively doing anything) all they'll experience is the zone changing around them passively. They'll be adapting to whatever the active players are doing and relative to their point of view they'll see the zone changing EXACTLY the way I'm implying it would if it was one of my randomly occurring switches that no one could manipulate. If the vast majority of players for the vast majority of the time will experience the zone changes passively without any extra efforts on their part how can you possibly assume that would be a "fatal mistake" or non-ideal for them? Why would it ruin their experience if they happen to see a turf war ebb-n-flow around them while they do nothing to affect its outcome either way?

I understand you've been single-mindedly locked into the idea that all of these situations must be player-influenceable. While having SOME of these things work that way is perfectly fine and reasonable it's borderline silly and unrealistic to assume that everything in this world would work like that. Once again sometimes situations are COMPLETELY RANDOM and unaffectable by anyone's actions regardless of wants or desires. Sometimes things just happen - it's completely unreasonable to assume players could affect EVERY SINGLE situation that happens everywhere in the game and I really have no idea why you can't see that.

I'm not saying everything like this has to be slave to a RNG. I'm just saying it makes no sense if -none- of them are random. The premise that players should be able to affect everything regardless is the only fatal mistake going on here.

Gangrel wrote:

The thing is, even if 100% of the player base didn't take part in it, it would still change one way or another.

Right. That's why I don't see why it's a supposedly fatal problem for the game to provide ANY examples of this where players don't even have the opportunity to affect a change. If we're agreed the default of players' inaction is "random change" then "random change" can't possibly be bad for the game at large when handled properly by Dev design.

Gangrel wrote:

One of the worst things to do though, is flip something ingame, and if you as a player were there 100% of the time in the area that was being changed, and you were killing off mobs left right and center, and no matter what you did... it wouldn't change a thing.
That is the thing that Redlynne does NOT want to happen.

Yeah that would be tragically sad... Too bad real life (and even comic book land) is full of examples of people trying everything imaginable to affect the outcome of events and STILL have those things change beyond their control regardless of what they did.

I'm not saying EVERYTHING like this has to be beyond player control/influence. I'm just saying some things almost have to be in order to be as realistic a world as possible.

Gangrel wrote:

It would be an event with a predetermined outcome. Something that would feel "cheating". It would be like a Giant Monster that shows up, you beat on it for 20-30 minutes, and no matter what you do, it goes after those 30 minutes. It wouldn't matter how many people were there, it would go after 30 minutes. It effectively have "infinite" hit points. Sure, it would be an event, but it would be a pointless event.
Of course, you could always just randomly flip the affiliations randomly after every server downtime, but that then becomes a case of "waiting it out until its beneficial for you"... which could possibly be weeks (all depends as to how often downtime is though).

The challenge for the Devs of course is to make sure that these kinds of supposedly "pointless event" outcomes are minimized and I believe they could be with a bit of Dev cleverness without too much difficulty. For instance I wouldn't have your Giant Monster Event be handled by one of my "random" conclusions. But something like an ongoing turf war event between two factions that's effectively "background scenery" for a given zone could very adequately be handled via RNG.

For the sake of context I have an example that should make it easier to grasp. Take Perez Park from the old game where part of the story was that the Hellions and Skulls were supposed to be fighting for turf. What we had were a bunch of static spawns in the game.

Now what if they were actually fighting? They would have patrols where at times they would cross paths and engage in combat. Attempts made for incursions into the opposing gang's territory. Scripted portions of the event could be set up to occur for particular mobs within the factions to plot attacks on a location of interest, or to plot an attack on a particular npc of note in the rival.

Players attacking one side would end up helping the other side. If more players got involved attacking both sides, more order would be restored to the area. Police would have more of a presence, citizens come out again. During the gang wars police might even offer missions to pcs to arrest leaders within the gangs in order to cull the gangs.

Now to take this a step further, instead of an entirely scripted event, what if the npcs were acting based on their motivations and hooks set up to trigger missions and events depending on what motivations have been met or need to be met? An example of this was given in another thread where an npc marketeer would play the market based on what they need, and if they ended something they couldn't get off the market they would offer missions to players to get what they need,nice they have their motivation met, they wouldn't give out the mission anymore. Take that example and expand upon it to entire factions within a zone...as I said our AI dev has so e lofty goals...

A while back, I took that notion, Tannim, "to the next level" by tying the offense/defense keying to weather conditions and time of day. So if it was dark/night, the Skulls would be on offense, and if it was bright/day, the Hellions would be on offense. Expand that out with the other groups and conditions ... day/rain puts the Hydra on offense, night/rain puts the Circle of Thorns on offense, day/fog puts The Lost on offense, night/fog puts the Vahzilok on offense ... and so on. All that would really be happening is that with changing weather and day/night combinations you'd be swapping in "overlay spawn maps" to generate extra spawns with the desired behavior so as to change the "flavor" of the zone. So you'd have a "base spawn map" that contains all the static spawn points, but then you'd have a variety of additional overlay spawn maps that add in patrols and "offensive pushes" and so on which causes "churn" on the Perez Park zone map.

The underlying idea being that a zone like Perez Park ought to be ... dynamic ... rather than static ... in terms of what the mobs are DOING in addition to their distribution and behavior patterns.

Of course, Paragon City didn't have weather (per se) so ... yeah.

There are things where PCs ought to not have influence over events that happen. Things like ... weather ... (although with Weather Control that case gets weakened slightly, but you know what I mean). Whether it rains or shines, is foggy or clear, ought to not be something that Players can "manipulate" per se (except in tactically localized ways with Weather Control Powers, granted).

However, your position of needing/requiring NPC events that EXCLUDE PCs starts begging some very important questions, like ... where's the FUN in that? Specifically, if what I do as a Player has absolutely no bearing at all whatsoever on what happens, then why should I care about it? What's my motivation for wanting to give a (pardon the pun in this context) "flip" about what happens? When things are TOTALLY beyond my control, they get ignored.

My angle is that events that PCs can participate in are "Fun" generators ... while events that happen regardless of what the PCs do are decidedly less so. Why? Because you've eliminated a very substantial motivation to play (and possibly even to pay attention at all). When I *know* that my actions will have absolutely no effect whatsoever, why should I care?

To give a concrete example of what I'm talking about ... in City of Heroes it was possible to Street Sweep. But Street Sweeping had absolutely NO EFFECT whatsoever on the crime rate in Paragon City. The mobs would just respawn. It was impossible to "take back the city" from the criminal element loitering everywhere in the streets. Net result (for me)? Stop fighting crime on the streets and just bypass it all, because none of it matters (unless Badge Hunting). There is a sense of Learned Helplessness involved when what you do doesn't make any difference.

I'm trying to work on a sliding scale here where PC participation could be major, minor or even marginal (and possibly even negligible) without resorting to a One Size Fits All solution ... but setting things up such that PC participation is MEANINGLESS forgoes an incredible range of possibilities and opportunities to engage Players in ways that would result in "Fun" as the main reward, with social camraderie and competition being a significant side benefit. And I'm doing so with the explicit understanding that just because PCs *CAN* participate doesn't mean that they will ... or that enough of them will be participating to make a difference. So stuff could very well happen when no one is actively paying attention (think "off hours" of game time and the like) or in Zone Instances that are low population (Atlas Park 8 has only 3 players in it, none of which are participating in an event there, for example).

I just don't want to waste opportunities for Fun Gameplay ... even if PCs aren't always making use of them or participating in them.

Ideally, what you'd want is a dynamic equilibrium that promotes "churn" around the city, but also makes it possible for "takeovers" (either hostile or friendly) of multiple regions can occur, but as a single faction gains more territory their "grip" on their holdings becomes increasingly unstable. That way you set things up to be a sort of King of the Hill competition in which no one gets to be King of the Hill [i]for too long[/i].

In other words ... that's just the way the empire crumbles.